When I spent almost three years homeless, I watched the people around me. Now, as a housed old woman, I still watch my sisters who have not been fortunate enough to make the transition. Many of the women simply have no desire to live inside. Their paranoia and mental illness keep them from the degree of control necessary to live in the 'real' world. Some are alcoholics and drug abusers. They push their worldly possessions around in a shopping cart, known as a "Burnside Cadillac here in Portland,Oregon; the name derived from one of our main streets. In the downtown core this street is the territory of the disenfranchised and desperate.

Old women carry their secrets under one of the many sweaters they wear. They guard these secrets as a pyramid guards the ages. One false step, they have learned, could be the last. Old women are simple. No fancy cars. . . or restaurants. No blue tint or breast enhancements. The time for frou frous has long passed. Now the plan is to survive. Old women are sly. They know people take what they

want to, so old women circle the wagons, and scout the territory. Slipping in and out of shadows, old women are invisible to people who do not want to see them anyway. They slip, unseen, into the fog of oblivion. Old women are sorceresses. Their magic pulls a crust of bread from a pocket that leaks lint. . . pulls a secluded corner into safety. They let another day be added to their calendar. And old women do as they have done since goddesses ruled the earth - they endure. Old women endure.

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